Novell, Inc. (NASDAQ: NOVL), the leader in intelligent workload management, today announced that it has entered into a definitive merger agreement under which Attachmate Corporation would acquire Novell for $6.10 per share in cash in a transaction valued at approximately $2.2 billion. Attachmate Corporation is owned by an investment group led by Francisco Partners, Golden Gate Capital and Thoma Bravo. Novell also announced it has entered into a definitive agreement for the concurrent sale of certain intellectual property assets to CPTN Holdings LLC, a consortium of technology companies organized by Microsoft Corporation, for $450 million in cash, which cash payment is reflected in the merger consideration to be paid by Attachmate Corporation.

Time is short! The early bird ticket for Open Horizons members is valid until September 15, 2010. To this day all Open Horizons members can get a GWAVACon ticket for EUR 250. After this deadline the regular ticket price will be EUR 420 for Open Horizons members. Finally there are a lot of new details regarding training, workshops and speakers available online. So Dave Wilkes, Engineering Vice President Novell, will be on-site at GWAVACon EMEA for the first time to talk about products, visions and future plans in his keynote and guide you through his workshops. Download the event flyer here. More information and the registration at www.GWAVACon.com

 A logical question Novell has already been asked is “does Novell plan to continue development of its real-time, enterprise communication and collaboration solution, Novell Pulse?”

The answer is an emphatic Yes. At Novell, they hear from enterprise users that they need the combination of social connections, rich profiles, real-time co-authoring and their ever-present files in order to make it easier to work together and actually produce better results. Novell Pulse delivers this combination that business consumers want, plus the security controls enterprises demand. Novell is highly committed to the future of enterprise collaboration, and Novell Pulse is on track. Further, they remain committed to pursuing the benefits of real-time collaboration to enable new applications, users and organizations to work together.

Today, Novell announced that its Data Synchronizer product is now shipping with a GroupWise connector. Specifically this means that Novell GroupWise now syncs to Microsoft SharePoint and other third-party applications including Salesforce.com and SugarCRM.